Fallen 6
by Devaro Ayanami
Summary: Tribute to Halo Reach. Enjoy!


Fallen 6

By D.A.

Disclaimer: I own Nothing. I simply wrote a story.

Rating: T  
Words: 863  
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Stepping off the last rung, I take a few short steps and carefully slip Emile's knife from the head of a Golden Elite. Turning to look at that body of my teammate, I nod slowly.

God speed, I'll be along shortly.

Hefting my DMR, I walk away from the construction yards and along the cliffside. Maybe I'll find a transport. Maybe I'll find a hole in the ground. After all that's happened to me, I'm pretty familiar with Murphy's Law.

000

Figures, nothing but kilometers of scorched terrain. Shattered buildings, glassed hillside, burned out vehicles. Like back home, where my old life came crashing down around me. Off to my left slightly, I spot a watch-platform. Good a spot as any, I guess. Walking up the wide stairway on the back, I immediately spot the two mounted machineguns. Good, both have mostly full magazines.

Taking Emile's knife, I haphazardly scratch "N6" into the center support. Noble Six. That's all I'd heard for the last few years. Sometimes, I wonder if I would even recognize if someone spoke my real name. Sometimes, I think I forget my real name. Quickly, before I forget again, I hurriedly scratch "I.S." and two simple Katakana below it.

Slipping the knife back into its borrowed sheath, I move over to one of the mounted guns and break it from its moorings. Here goes: Game, Set, Match.

A high droning catches my attention, and turning slightly to my left I spot a Phantom dropping off grunts and what might be a pair of Elites. Fine, they want to fight, it's their funeral. I chunk both my grenades out at them, one to either side of the group. I catch most of them, and the rest try to hide behind some boulders. Behind me, off away from the platform, I hear the drone of another Phantom.

The more, the merrier, right?

000

I stumble as more plasma scorches across my back, my suit's alarms screaming at me to find cover and let the shields rebuild. Nowhere to hide, so I slip my helmet from my head and drop it. I don't need some calm, emotionless computer, that sounds far more like my dad than I like, telling me I'm about to die. I can tell that much all on my own.

Somehow, after all these years, I still have a part of me that thinks I deserve to go out this way. Alone, with no one to mark my grave, and no one to mourn my passing. I may not be the boy I was back then, but it's still part of me.

000

It very quickly turns into the nastiest brawl I've ever seen in my 20 plus years alive, including back before all this. Though… Maybe not as bad as what happened to my fiery roommate. And yet all I can think about, as the Elites walk away, is that Cortana got away safely. And that, despite all this, I think a few of my friends would still have given anything to have walked in my shoes.

000

"Arbiter, I have discovered odd markings here." a lightly armored Elite called out, gesturing with his Plasma Rifle at a point low on a tilted metal pole.

The pole rose from the center of a weather-corroded platform, which was no longer level itself. Arbiter, followed by a Spartan III and a Golden Elite, approached at an unhurried pace as he glanced about the grass-covered hills.

So much had changed in the last three months. The Grunts had sided with the Elites, while the Jackels and Brutes had continued to side with the few remaining Prophets. The Spartans had begun to return, as evidenced by the one escorting the Arbiter.

The Arbiter shrugged his shoulders, resettling the human Assault Rifle he had latched to his back. It was a simple thing to honor the missing hero of the humans, the one they called Master Chief and his people called The Demon.

Giving the Elite version of a chuckle as they reached the pole, Arbiter thought of the surprise felt by many when Cortana II had surfaced in the computer aboard the Ship Master's flagship. Perhaps The Demon would surface again one day as well.

"Who could have left this?" Arbiter murmured, looking closely at the faded etching.

"Noble Six, the last member of Noble team. He operated a Railgun to give Pillar of Autumn covering fire while she made her escape." a light, feminine voice floated from the Spartan, which tilted its head slightly before continuing in a masculine, faintly asian accented voice, "The Spartan your predecessor chose, Cortana?"

"Yes." the female voice replied.

"Then who is "I" "S" ?" Arbiter inquired, "And what are these runes beneath?"

"Those are Katakana, Arbiter." the Spartan answered, "I would guess the second two letters are the Spartan's real initials, and the Katakana is probably his personal name."

"I'm not getting anything on it from here." Cortana said, "I'll have to get in touch with the UNSC's Data-net once we get back off world."

"What does it say, Spartan?" Arbiter asked, turning to look at the super soldier.

"Shinji."

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A/N: Finished Halo: Reach, thought I'd try and write a tribute. Ended up being an NGE/Halo: Reach crossover. Awesome game, and saddening that Noble Six didn't make it off world.

For a moment, when the AI was revealed and that it chose N6, I kinda though he was Master Chief… Then I realized, despite game logic, that you can't go from an Officer to a Warrant Officer and so he couldn't be the same Spartan. That, and John was a Spartan Two, not a Spartan Three.

Hope you enjoyed, check out my NGE oneshot series "Pilot's Table".

I'll probably rewrite this at some point in the future, but I'll let it go here.


End file.
